Well, like many people here i now also am the owner of a Phantom 2 in piecies. After more than 100 succesfull flights with my phantom 1, i decided to upgrade to a new Phantom 2 V2 with H3-3D gimbal. Within a week i came on this forum to read more about a problem i had. I had to send it back to the dealer and got it back after 2 months. The dealer repaired it at his own cost, because DJI was not responding to him. In these 2 months a read a lot on this forum and saw many many problems with the expesive battery's, and phantoms falling from the sky for no reason, and no dji service. It made me scared to fly it, and i could not believe that there were so many fly-aways etc etc.

Well, now i believe. Within 20 flights my bird fell from the sky yesterday with no reason at all. After spending hours and hours to fix the jello effect i finally had smooth video. I was at the third flight of this day, and i even let the phantom cool down after every flight. There was very little wind and he was flying better than ever before. Perfectly stable and very smooth video. When coming down suddenly the motors stopt in mid air at about 50 meters height. It fell down like a rock in a meadow and i saw the pieces flying everywhere. Landing gear broken, gimbal bent in every possible way, video transmitter broke of at the antenna, which also was broken. And the worst of all, the connector from my Gopro was broken of, so no more charging and copying video. The battery was launced out of the body and the plastic was broken. It had more than 80% left and was still on. The weird thing was that 2 propellors were lose and almost fully unscrewed. I'm 100% sure that they were tight because i checked this earlier today. In the video you can hear the motors stop, turn on for 1 second, and then stop again.

Movie from gopro and FPV: http://youtu.be/qyFNb0bM_9Y

I am very aware this hobby has a risk of crashing your machine, and i spend hours and hours of reading to make sure i do everything right. From calibrations to safely store the battery's at the correct voltage etc etc. But in my opinion this should not happen. Not within 20 flights, and not with so many many people.
After reading about all these failures, and see it for myself, and also the bad service of DJI, i decided i never want or dare to fly a DJI machine ever again.
I want to thank everybody on this forum for the nice time i spend here, and all the extra stuff i learned here. I do hope other people can enjoy their phantoms for a long time, and have many safe flights. Because after all, it was an amazing machine.

Sorry to hear of your crash and hate to see you go. Dropping out of sky seems to be from total loss of power. I suspect  the spring tensioner on the battery connection. We are looking at this closely to see if it could be a factor. Did you see any issues on screen when she dropped. Is your bird repairable?

Sad to hear about your Phantom. Looking at the FPV video, your telemetry data was all showing normal. You had plenty of battery. It may have been an ESC the way it nearly flipped on one side. There have been reports of the props coming completely off which suggests the motors reverse during flight.
Yes, this is an expensive hobby and we are all just beta testers when it comes to these toys. They pack a lot of technology into that small plastic shelll and I don't think the bugs have been worked out yet, from the Phantom 1 to the Phantom 3. I am awaiting delivery of my 3DR Solo which should arrive next week. I'll beta test with them for a while and see how it goes. My Phantom 2 is still operating but everytime I take it out I wonder if I will get it back. I would hate for my GoPro to get ruined.

Jack,

That's a very tough story to read. Sounds like you were really being very cautious. Many times after reading a story like yours I realize that one or both of my birds will inevitably meet the same fate. I did, early on, experience an still "unexplained" crash. Fortunately, I was able to repair the damage with the help of people on this forum. In viewing your video, it's apparent that it can happen to any of us on our very next flight. Makes it very hard to take off sometimes. I guess it would be a little easier to swallow if DJI had a great support system in place to expediently take care of an incident such as yours. Unfortunately, I believe we're more like Alpha testers than Beta with these birds.

I really feel horrible for you and I hope you can figure out a way to get in the air again soon. Technology is changing rapidly and the competition is heating up. It should lead to more options and a more stable flying platform. I'm really sorry this happened to you Jack. Good luck.

Jerry

Thanks for the reply's and compassion.
I also expect something went wrong with the ESC's, but i did not open up the phantom yet, because i want to wait for what my dealer has to say.
If i find out what caused this crash, i will report it here.

Jackvg Posted at 2015-6-8 04:51
Thanks for the reply's and compassion.
I also expect something went wrong with the ESC's, but i did ...

Sounds good Jack. There are plenty of people here that can help you get it back In the air.

Ray

Wow, sorry to hear of those problems!
One of the advantages of the fully integrated birds like the new P3 is that the telemetry is much more advanced and so it a lot of the warnings and error recovery. In addition, it keeps logs.

I wonder what the first problem and repair was? Was this V3.0?

droneflyers.com Posted at 2015-6-8 07:37
Wow, sorry to hear of those problems!
One of the advantages of the fully integrated birds like the n ...

No, this was a Phantom 2 V2 with gopro gimbal (no vision). The first problem was about the plastic body of the phantom. There were cracks in the top half of the shell. Even without flying they got worse, so my dealer replaced the top half of the shell, and after that everything was fine.

i used to think these were all pilot error problems until it happened to me several times.  a very similar crash where she just falls out of the sky.  i have video on all of them and it appears the motor or ESC just gives pout in flight.  i too think dji has serious problems that they haven't fully tested and worked out and that we are the beta testers.  but i do love to fly them.  this is why i work hard not to fly over people, pets or cars.

Yeah that looks like ESC... certainly wasn't a loss of power from battery.  I hate that I can't fly my drone without worrying when it will plummet out of the sky.

hello there.
i feel  so sorry about this!
may i ask if you are in naza m or phandom mode ?

Raybro Posted at 2015-6-7 19:53
Sad to hear about your Phantom. Looking at the FPV video, your telemetry data was all showing normal ...

You will let us know all about the 3DR, correct?!

Loose props? That's strange!
There are some people who have reported props coming off and we have to assume that they were not tight enough or something else (threads worn, used thread lock on screws, etc.).
But that in itself could have caused the crash......listening to the video again that seems very possible. The machine seemed to try one to stablize, but then it's flight controller noticed that it was turning upside down so it would have likely not continued to try and save itself with throttle.

This is anecdotal, but I read about a lot of crashes and it seems that P2's flying GoPros do so in a higher percentage. This could be a number of things included RF coming from the GoPro itself. Blade had this problem big time with GoPro on their 350QX.

Well, I hope whatever machine you go with next makes you happy!

nico_mav@hotmai Posted at 2015-6-8 23:37
hello there.
i feel  so sorry about this!
may i ask if you are in naza m or phandom mode ?

It was in naza m mode. GPS was on, and i tried also to switch to atti and manual, but at that time it was already to late.

Jackvg Posted at 2015-6-10 04:50
It was in naza m mode. GPS was on, and i tried also to switch to atti and manual, but at that time ...

Been there, done that. Too late.

Jerry

Little update. Yesterday i decided to check the phantom with power on. Without props i started the engines, and as suspected 1 engine did not work. It tried to turn, but it couldnt. From the smell i know 99,9% sure the ESC has blown out. There is 12 months warranty on an ESC. But do you get a new ESC, or a new phantom which crashed due to this? My experience so far is that i get nothing at all.

Jackvg Posted at 2015-6-12 14:19
Little update. Yesterday i decided to check the phantom with power on. Without props i started the e ...

Well, i give up. Bought this phantom in february, had a few flights (less than 20) and the rest of the time the thing is gone for warranty. I wanted to make some nice movies this summer, but summer and my holiday are almost over, and still no phantom back. The value goes down and the longer it takes, the less money i can get back for it. But after complaining to my dealer we agreed i could get my  money back, because he also did not heard anything from DJI. I have never ever seen such bad service with such a big company. But many thanks to my dealer for solving it this way.
How extreme cool these phantoms are, i have lost my faith in DJI.

Jackvg Posted at 2015-9-3 10:33
Well, i give up. Bought this phantom in february, had a few flights (less than 20) and the rest of ...

If this happens to me, and they refuse to acknowledge an honest inquiry I will just call this number every single day.

Dealer inquiries: sales@dji.com
Address: L.A., California, USA.
Tel: 818-235-0789
Office hours: Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 (PST)
I've heard a lot about their poor service. I wonder if it depends on what country you reside in?